Wendy Dager: Let's stop blaming the victims of sexual assault

When I was a teenager, I did a lot of dumb stuff. Luckily, back in the dark ages of the late 1970s and early 1980s, we had no Internet, no cellphones and no digital cameras, or my regrets would be exponential.

When I became a mother in 1988, I did not look down at my sweet little baby girl and think that two decades later I would be telling her to remove those stupid duck-face photos from Facebook.

We are now learning that there is much worse than goofy poses being shared through the wonders of technology.

There are horrible, amoral people out there, taking photos of girls who pass out at parties and are sexually assaulted, debased and abused. So destructive are these photos, circulated through social networking or cellular telephone, that several of these girls have killed themselves.

Every time I see a story about a child who has committed suicide because she was raped or bullied or both, I feel sick.

This violence against young women has got to stop. It’s going to be tough, given that so many parents think their children would never participate in an assault and the dissemination of its photographic evidence.

I once interviewed a bullying expert who told me that the reason schoolyard bullies get away with bad behavior is because the parents are bullies, too. This is why kids who are bullied are often told to suck it up and deal with it because it’s easier for school administrators to manage the victim, rather than the bully and his rotten parents.

This same technique is often applied to young victims of sexual assault. Many of the boys who commit these crimes go unpunished, while the victim is told to back down.

When it comes to the commission of a sex crime, a young man should know that what he’s doing is not only legally and morally wrong, but also evil.

The problem is society gives him too many excuses to go way beyond behaving badly: “She’s drunk.” “She’s passed out.” “She has a reputation.”

Look at the case in Ohio, where some media correspondents seemed to sympathize with the teenage perpetrators of a sexual assault. What about the victim, who was not only attacked physically, but received death threats from other teens when she went to the police with her story?

While there are many who should share the blame — the boys who become criminals, the co-conspirators who make the photos go viral, the adults who provide alcohol or simply look the other way — it is the victim who is usually found the most culpable.

That’s why some of these girls are taking their own lives. They think everyone will believe they are at fault and are afraid that they’ll never again have normalcy.

If I had sons, I would counsel them as to what is expected of a gentleman, but children don’t always listen, even when you are a good mom or dad. While some kids will never consume alcohol, others will — often to excess — and their parents might not know about it until something terrible happens.

When it comes to the convergence of alcoholic beverages, hormones, immaturity and mob mentality, the result can be a felonious act, devastating families and communities.

Boys, please, instead of being an idiot and possibly going to jail for 15 years and then having to register as a sex offender, look at young women as human beings, someone’s daughter or sister.

And, girls, be vigilant. Watch out for each other. It doesn’t matter what a young woman’s alleged reputation is or how much she’s had to drink. She doesn’t deserve to become anyone’s victim.